For timekeeping, Finland follows Eastern European Time (EET) during its winter as standard time and Eastern European Summer Time (EEST) in the summer as daylight saving time. EET is two hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time and EEST is three hours ahead. Finland adopted EET in 1921, and daylight saving time in its current form from 1981. Up to the 19th century, each locality used its own solar time, which could vary in Finland by up to 31 minutes. In 1862, a mean time was adopted as a single time zone for railway scheduling. Daylight saving time was first attempted in 1942, abandoned as not useful, and introduced again in 1981 to align with neighbouring countries. In 2017, the Finnish parliament voted to call on the European Union to abolish daylight saving time. Finland's time zone is maintained by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the Centre for Metrology and Accreditation, using an atomic clock and hydrogen monitors. The 24-hour clock notation is used in Finland.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Finland
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1798:
Outraged by the XYZ Affair, the United States rescinded its treaties with France, resulting in the undeclared Quasi-War, fought entirely at sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-War
1954:
After the culmination of the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, Carlos Castillo Armas was sworn in as president of Guatemala. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castillo_Armas
1963:
The secret police of Ngô Đình Nhu, brother and chief political adviser of South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm, attacked a group of American journalists who were covering a protest during the Buddhist crisis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Seven_Day_scuffle
1983:
After writing a letter to Soviet premier Yuri Andropov, American schoolgirl Samantha Smith visited the Soviet Union as Andropov's personal guest, becoming known as "America's Youngest Ambassador". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
extenuate: 1. Of a person: emaciated, wasted, weakened; of the body or part of it: atrophied, shrunken, withered. 2. Of a quality or thing: lessened, weakened. 3. Reduced to poverty; impoverished. 4. To make (something) less dense, or thinner; also, to lower the viscosity of (something). 5. (archaic) 6. To make (someone or something) slender or thin; to emaciate, to waste. 7. To underestimate or understate the importance of (something); to underrate. 8. (specifically) To diminish or seek to diminish the extent or severity of (a crime, guilt, a mistake, or something else negative) by making apologies or excuses; to palliate. 9. (obsolete) 10. To beat or draw (a metal object, etc.) out so as to lessen the thickness. 11. To reduce the quality or quantity of (something); to lessen or weaken the force of (something). 12. To degrade (someone); to detract from (someone's qualities, reputation, etc.); to depreciate, to disparage. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/extenuate
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. --Robert A. Heinlein https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein